After several years of planning I have finally made a start on my n scale layout of Kensington Olympia.

My previous layout Minty Coloradohad to be dismantled to make room for the new layout.

Kensington Olympia will initially be based in 1980 and will include Motorail services the Kenny Belle and various freight workings taken from the Working Timetables. In addition using my research for 1S76.com the fledgling Manchester to Brighton services will be included.

I will post some pictures here shortly but for the time being progress can be found HERE.

I have plenty of photos, maps and track layout drawings to work on. The layout is 10ft x 8ft in size. The track layout for Olympia will be reduced to fit but will still include the 4 tracks through the station including the scissors crossover. Motorail bays will be reduced from 4 to 3, the NE and SE bays reduced from 3 to 2.

I have already made a start on building some Carflats for the Motorail services. Progress can be found HERE.

Kensington Olympia still boasted two signal boxes in the 1980's South Main and North Main. As there are no suitable kits to butcher scratch-building both boxes is the only option. The West London line was a right old mish-mash as it was joint railway with some LNWR, GWR and SR features. Both signal boxes are of LNWR design.

I have scratch-built several N scale buildings in the past for my old layout Minty Colorado ( now broken up ). Including the Moffat Tunnel East Portal ( featured in an article N Scale Railroading magazine )

and the Denver North Yard Control Tower

Both are built from Plasticard.

For the Olympia signal boxes I decided to use a mixture of a plasticard former and brick-paper outer. I've downloaded several of the Scalescenes brick papers and these have been printed on to A4 label stock on a Canon inkjet printer. I have made some drawings up based on photos and some info regarding the window sizes which gave me the overall length of the box of around 50ft, 10cm. This is the first time I've used this downloadable media and I'm quite impressed with it.

This is the first of the walls (30 thou) and the base (50thou).

The assembled structure, the signal box sits within the platform and end ramp hence the deeper base to take this into account. The door on the right originally gave access to the interlocking but later was also used as the main access to the signal box when the external staircase at the southern was removed. The door is accessed via steps down in the platform hence it being set a lower level.

The scalescenes dark red brick paper.

The brick paper was wrapped around the former and then cut and folded back to edge the brick panels.

One of the inset brick panels showing the brick paper. The edge is left clear to allow a good bond with the glue.

The completed brick base, the cabin will be a little more complicated.

I've always thought Kensington Olympia would make a great basis for an N-gauge layout. Wide variety of stock, operational interest and natural scenic breaks all around. What will you have at your backdrop - the row of houses to the East, or Olympia itself?

Originally I was going to try and have Olympia as the backdrop but as the real site naturally curves towards the Russell Road buildings they will be used as the back drop. The problem is Georgian Townhouses in low relief! Kingsway Models do one in OO http://www.kingswaym....com/page35.htm I will ask them if they will reduce some to 2mm as I'll need quite a lot.

The plan is to have a scenic break at the two bridges either side of the station at Hammersmith Road and Addison Gardens. Because there will be 4ft board between the Hammersmith Rd and fiddle Yard entrance I'm thinking of having the Earls Court 2 building as the scenic break although that wasn't built until 1991!

A roughly drawn track diagram. Each board is 4ft long by 2ft wide. As I don't like tracks parallel to the board edge everything is at a slight angle deliberately. Some of the cross overs omitted for clarity.......OK I forgot to draw them in!

The first photo is of the front wall of the signal box cabin partially cut out leaving the main window apertures.

The second photo shows the windows. No one makes anything suitable so I came up with a cunning plan

Windows are made from 15thou clear plasticard. An A4 label is printed using a table drawn in Word. Each cell of the table is 0.25cm x 0.55cm shaded any colour you like. The border is left uncoloured 1pt size to leave the window frame.

The label is mounted on to the clear plasticard and the shaded area cut away and then the window is cut whole from the sheet...very carefully! each window is 12mm x 5.5mm in size.

A pair of sliding windows and a 6 pane window in place to check sizes.....good they fit.

3 walls of the cabin completed....................

.....................and from the opposite end.

All fours cut and attached.

and with some of the windows loosely fitted.
Due to a slight cock up with the west wall I'd managed to measure nearly all the openings too small so I'm having to file out the apertures so that the windows will fit,
The cabin is not fitted to the base for ease of work, but will be fitted when largely finished.
Next phase will be to add the walkway supports around the cabin then paint to the outside which will allow me to it the roof. I will put an interior in as well.

I realised early on this morning that is was going to be much easier to put the walkway around the cabin then add the supports afterwards. This has now been completed. I'll get some pics uploaded later.

Thanks.....and thank you to everyone else who have posted.
The signal box walkways have now been completed and the cabin has had a coat of white paint which has dried a bit too glossy for my liking. Now where is the satin varnish? Should gets some pics uploaded later today. I managed to find a couple of new colour photos of the signal box yesterday that appear to show that the brickwork was in fact yellow..... oh B*****. To late now and correcting the North main box will only highlight the issue.

Just after the first coat of paint went on I realised I'd forgotten to fit the window sills.......they went on before the second coat!!
Its been sprayed Tamiya Racing White acrylic by aerosol. The timber and walk ways have been picked out using a Lifecolor acrylic dark grey for the timber corners etc to represent a faded black and a lighter grey on the walk ways to later weather.

Firstly unpainted

Then three views of the cabin painted.

I've ordered 7 Ratio signal box detail sets as there are over a 100 levers to fit, this should give me 175, enough to do the North Main box as well.( anyone want some GWR signalbox windows!?) I've also ordered from York Modelmaking a laser cut plastic signal box staircase this is for the north main box...........There's not enough hours in the day for me cut this from scratch and stay sane.

The signal box staircase for the North Main box arrived along with some magnetic right-angled clamps in double quick from York Modelmaking this is so small I've held it up to the light to photograph...look great and I hope worth the cost of not driving me nuts trying to scratch-build one

After a rest from modelling on Saturday....Mrs G and I had a very nice trip to Gurnard on the IOW and a superb lunch at one of our favourite places............... and also to watch the round the island race. Trains ferry and buses all ran to time.....The race was so slow that we were on the Cat back to Portsmouth weaving in between the yachts at 5pm.

Sunday saw the cabin get a quick coat of Testors Dullcote and allowed to dry.

Today I've fitted all the windows and attached the base and cabin to each other. The postman has also just delivered the Ratio signal box detail kits ( all seven of them ) from a shop in Liverpool.

Photos taken out in the garden using a sheet of mirrored plasticard to show the reverse detail. I'm pleased with progress so far.

Whilst the pictures I have of the interior seem to show over a 100 levers in the South Main box the Signal Record Society only show 75 http://www.s-r-s.org.../gwx/S51-3.pdf
The ratio kits have a frame of 21 which is so over-scale I can only get about 50 levers in the space......You won't see much once the roof is on!!!!!!

Completed the roof this afternoon. this has been tiled using the Scalescenes download Grey tiles. Cocked up the mounting of the barge boards which I will need to resolve. The multiple Ratio signal box detail kits came in handy as they have gutters and down pipes so a start has been made fixing them.

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